Mister X. John Lutz

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СКАЧАТЬ night back. That was how Jerry knew he’d visit the twins’ room. After being out of town for a while on one his sales trips, he almost always paid the twins a visit.

      The tall shadow that was Mr. Keller moved to Tiffany’s bed. Chrissie, in her own bed, turned away, drew her knees up almost to her chin, and held the wadded sheet tightly against her ears. She was facing the window, but Jerry was sure she couldn’t see him, the way her face was screwed into an ugly mask, her eyes clenched tightly shut.

      Behind her, shadows began to move on the far wall. Holding his breath, Jerry leaned slightly forward.

      Within minutes the rhythmic, writhing dance of light and darkness on the wall became more urgent, wilder. It was impossible to know what was shadow and what was Tiffany or her father.

      He could hear a soft moaning through the window and couldn’t be sure if it was Tiffany or Chrissie.

      The writhing and moaning continued in a madder and madder rhythm. Jerry was hard now, and he lowered his right hand and stroked himself. Within minutes he’d reached orgasm.

      The movement of the distorted figures on the wall finally slowed, then stopped altogether.

      The tall shadow that was Mr. Keller straightened up from Tiffany’s bed. It moved toward the window, but Jerry, secure in the knowledge that he was invisible in the darkness and shelter of the yews, stayed motionless and continued to watch.

      Mr. Keller rested a hand briefly on Chrissie’s shoulder. He knew she’d been awake, been listening. Jerry thought that almost surely she hadn’t been the only one in the house who’d heard. The twin’s mother must have heard something of what happened over and over in the twins’ room.

      She must know.

      The world of adults. Jerry wasn’t sure if he’d ever understand it.

      He watched as Mr. Keller crept to the bedroom door, opened it, and merged with the darkness beyond it, closing the door behind him.

      Neither twin moved for a long time, and then Chrissie removed the wadded sheet from her ears and sat up in bed. She looked over at Tiffany, who lay facing away from her, pretending to be asleep.

      Chrissie lay back and pretended to sleep herself.

      Jerry backed away from the window and made for the dark patch in the lawn where he could cross unseen into his own yard. He would return to his bed, where he’d pretend he’d never left the house, that he was asleep like the twins.

      Everyone pretending, as the night moved toward morning and another day.

      17

      New York, the present

      “We need to get together off the record,” Harley Renz had said to Quinn over the phone. That was why Quinn was in Bryant Park, on Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue, next to the library.

      Bryant was a pleasant green oasis surrounded by concrete in a busy part of town. Quinn sat on a bench not far from where a group of people were playing some kind of game where players tossed heavy balls underhanded and palm down, so reverse English would cut down the distance they rolled when they came to earth. Every once in a while about half the players would jump up and down and hug each other, but Quinn couldn’t see that much had been accomplished.

      Harley had entered the park from Sixth Avenue and was trudging steadily in Quinn’s direction. His general sagginess made him appear a lot heavier than he was. Maybe because of his face, which was jowly and sad-eyed, with a fleshy mouth usually arced down at the corners. Gravity was not his friend. The expensive blue suit he had on might have helped if he’d bothered to button its coat. Now and then the breeze off the avenue whipped the coat sideways and revealed the thin leather strap of a shoulder holster.

      He spotted Quinn and veered slightly to set his course more directly toward the bench, swinging his arms in his peculiar restricted way, as if he were carrying a heavy bucket in each hand.

      When he was about ten feet from Quinn, he showed his bloodhound smile. Sunlight sparked off one of his canine teeth. “I thought you’d be smoking one of your Cuban cigars, Quinn.”

      “Isn’t it illegal to smoke in a public park?”

      “Damned if I know,” Renz said. He pulled a cellophane-wrapped cigar from his shirt pocket, unwrapped it, and stuffed the torn cellophane back into his pocket.

      “Not to mention that Cuban cigars are illegal.”

      “Not to mention.” Renz bit the end off the cigar and spat it off to the side, then fired up the cigar with a silver lighter. The tobacco burned unevenly and made a soft sizzling sound, the way cheap cigars often did.

      “Somebody have a baby?” Quinn asked.

      Renz exhaled and held the cigar off to the side, as if even he was put off by its odor. “If you’d tell me your source for the Cubans, I wouldn’t have to smoke these dog turds.” He sucked on the cigar again, rolled the smoke around in his mouth and then slowly released it. “’Course, I don’t know now if I can still trust you.”

      “You never could,” Quinn said.

      “But I thought so for some things, which is why I’m disappointed in you.” Renz clamped the cigar in his teeth and from a side pocket of his suit coat drew out a folded, crinkly City Beat and handed it to Quinn.

      Quinn had seen the paper’s morning edition but pretended he hadn’t. TWIN SEEKS KILLER OF OTHER SELF, proclaimed the headline. Quinn scanned the story of the resurrection of the Carver investigation and vengeance delayed. It was spirited prose.

      He handed the paper back to Renz. “Cindy Sellers. Where does she get that stuff?”

      Renz stared at him as if they were playing poker and Quinn might buckle under pressure and display a tell. “Somebody’s talking, is where she’s getting it.”

      “Maybe,” Quinn said, unperturbed. “Or maybe she’s making it up.”

      “Whatever her source, Sellers has decided to be a pain in the ass.”

      “First Amendment,” Quinn said.

      “Yeah, yeah.” Renz wadded the City Beat into a tight ball and arced it gracefully into a nearby trash receptacle. He sat down heavily on the opposite end of the bench, causing it to rock slightly on uneven ground. “Whatever her source, she’s gonna continue writing this crap,” he said.

      “That’s like her. She can’t be trusted.”

      Renz looked over at the people tossing the balls and giving them backward spin. “What the hell are they doing over there? Bocce ball? Is it goddamned bocce ball?”

      “I don’t know,” Quinn said. “It’s something else in life that puzzles me.”

      “But you’re the sort who figures things out. For instance, you must know that with Sellers writing and blabbing about the Carver investigation all over town, the rest of the media wolves are gonna be hunting in packs. My assistant tells me our phones are already lit up with calls from the papers and television news. I had to make sure I wasn’t followed here by media schmucks.”

      Quinn СКАЧАТЬ